A government official appears at a man’s door. The man has been breaking the law: He has sold bread baked at home.

This isn’t a page from Kafka—it happened to Mark Stambler in Los Angeles.

For decades, Stambler has followed traditional methods to bake loaves of French bread. The ingredients are simple: distilled water, sea salt, wild yeast and organic grains. Stambler even mills the grain himself. To make it easier to steam loaves, he built a wood-fired oven in his own backyard. Stambler’s loaves came in first place at the Los Angeles County Fair and the California State Fair.

Soon after that, Stambler got the idea to expand his hobby into a home business, which became Pagnol Boulanger. Word of mouth spread. In June 2011, The Los Angeles Timesprofiled Stambler and his bread in a full-page feature.